Until about the 1670's, there existed a labor system that influenced almost every labor society in the Chesapeake society in Virginia. This source of labor system was known as being an indentured servant. Being an indentured servant was a different form of labor than that which existed in other nations, especially England, and had some very harsh conditions that were part of it. Though, even with all negatives that came along with this sort of labor system, it had a large effect on the Chesapeake society up until about 1670's.
If you look up indentured servants and slavery in a dictionary, there would be different definitions for each. Though, slavery would be the most common sort of labor that an indentured servant can be compared to. An indentured servant was a person who came to the New World for a number of reasons ranging from intentions to become free and rich or maybe even just for the reason of serving a punishment for a crime, but did not have enough money to pay for the cost of travel. That person would then sign an indenture, which we would call a contract in the modern day, that the person would be a servant from anywhere between four years or seven years from either a merchant that they borrowed money from or a ship captain and in exchange they would get their cost of travel across the Atlantic paid for. After the indenture is over after four to seven years, that servant would be free. Once the person made it to the colonies, they would be sold for almost double the value to a tobacco planter who would profit off the work that this indentured servant would do for them. A planter would expect to profit as much as the amount paid for the indentured servant within one year and the rest of the years would be purely profit for them, although not all indentured servants would live to even finish the indenture as they would either get very sick or die before it was over due to the harsh conditions and large amounts of labor they were required to...